Everyone prospers with free trade

[Fletch]

Everyone Prospers With Free Trade - Reason Magazine

Do we exploit people in Third World countries?

"The evidence does not show that," Palmer said. "Multinational companies pay a wage premium. They pay more than local companies pay ... because they want to attract good workers. Look at the Shanghai factory of General Motors. They pay three times what Chinese-owned factories (pay)."

Yet House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says that liberalizing trade with Central America would exploit workers.

"People want to work at those factories. They line up. They compete. Are they competing to get exploited? They're competing for higher-wage jobs. I think that those people know their interests better than Nancy Pelosi does."

Sen. Byron Dorgan called free trade "a race to the bottom. This says to American workers if you can't compete against 30-cents-an-hour labor in some other country, you lose your job."

"Again, evidence doesn't support that," said Palmer. "Look at the iPod. It says, 'Manufactured in China.' But if you look in the back, it says, 'Designed in California.' Most of the value is added by American workers."

Let the flames begin.

 

[irishfan]

I had a microeconomics professor at Ball State tell me that America would succeed in a truly free trade world. However, he also said that a country like China would have to raise the value of its money to the true value and not puposely keep it low like they do now. I never really thought of that but it does make sense if China is forced to bring their money up to its true value then you would not get the amount of goods per dollar we currently get.

I do believe that free trade will cause a continous decline in our manufacturing sector if some type of guidelines are not put in place to sway American companies to stay here and build here but that is my opinion.

 

[Ogre]

free trade works if we had a less intrusive and restictive govt. Let us follow the same standards as most 3rd world ****e holes and the cost to the bottom dollar reduces significantly to manufacture in the US.